Those NAB Over-the-Airheads! An Internet of Things Power Outage?

The National Association of Broadcasters is meeting in Las Vegas this week. Good luck on finding a cab or an Uber. The over-the-airheads who once provided news and entertainment for free are now looking to move retransmission consent onto every conceivable device, presumably including smart watches. Local and national retrans revenues keep growing faster than weeds in flower beds so all the airheads in Las Vegas are already counting on the dollars that will flow via TV everywhere and the Internet to laptops, desktops, smart phones, smart pads and smart wrists. What’s your guess at how much each device might generate? $0.25? $0.50? $1.00? Now, think of the multiplier. All of that and they use your and our spectrum (AKA public spectrum). Anyway, nice gig when you can get away with it. Nothing like Congress picking a winner, is there?

In a 50-plus year career writing and reporting on media, Paul S. Maxwell started and/or ran some 45+ publications ranging from CATV Newsweekly to Colorado Magazine to CableVision to Multichannel News to CableFAX and The BRIDGE Suite of daily newslett...
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